Facebook emotional manipulation experiment causes ire

NOW they really are unhappy. A Facebook researcher has apologised after work on how emotions transmit through the social network caused widespread indignation. For a week in 2012, Adam Kramer and his team hid status updates from nearly 700,000 people's newsfeeds on the basis of emotional content and measured whether this affected posts. There was a small but statistically significant change (PNAS, doi.org/tcg).

Scientists and other critics claim Facebook is guilty of an ethical breach. But Facebook claims users consent to such experiments when they join, even though most people don't read the lengthy terms of service.

Kramer has apologised on his Facebook profile, writing: "In hindsight, the research benefits of the paper may not have justified all of this anxiety."

Not everyone agrees. Tal Yarkoni of the University of Texas at Austin points out that Facebook, like Google and Amazon, constantly manipulates everyone's online experience.

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